Martin Shkreli’s crypto loses 90% of value after major wallet dumps tokens

The cryptocurrency of “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli plunged 90% on Friday after a wallet that appeared to belong to Shkreli sold more than 160 billion tokens.

The coin, dubbed “Martin Shkreli Inu” has recovered somewhat, but is still 55% below its Friday morning price. Shkreli, via a Discord account believed to be run by him, shared Bloomberg “I got hacked” when asked about the massive transfer.

The Martin Shkreli Inu coin is linked to Shkreli’s Web3 project “Druglike,” which he described as a software platform for people interested in “early-stage drug discovery projects.” Shkreli is best known for raising the price of a life-saving drug by 4,000%. He was sentenced to prison for a separate case, after he was convicted of securities fraud. In January, a federal judge slapped Shkreli with a lifetime ban from the pharmaceutical industry. It is unclear whether his new project violates this ban, although Druglike says it is “not a pharmaceutical company” nor engaged in drug development.

Since its debut, Martin Shkreli Inu has been a particularly volatile crypto. Even with the decline, it has gained 198% since its debut. And Friday’s plunge was not the first. On July 27th and 28th, the crypto value fell by 65%, before recovering.

While Shkreli claimed a hack, other big names in the crypto world put him down as news of the price drop spread. Billy Markus, one of the founders of Dogecoin, compared the fall via Twitter to the infamous Squid Game carpet from last year.

“this is the most shocking thing since the squid game token,” he wrote.

In 2015, Shkreli was CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals and raised the price of Daraprim — a drug that treats a specific parasitic infection that is especially threatening to people with compromised immune systems, such as those with HIV/AIDS — to $750 from $13.50 per tablet. Three years later, a federal court sentenced him to seven years in prison after finding him guilty of three counts of securities fraud. Shkreli was accused of swindling investors out of millions of dollars they gave to his two hedge funds, then swindling cash and stock from another biotech company he founded to repay those investors.